Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @01:15AM
from the einstein-is-next-up-against-the-wall dept.

mostxlnt writes "As we noted, the new Tory UK government has launched a website asking its subjects which laws they'd most like repealed. There are proposals up for repeal of the Laws of Thermodynamics: Second, Third, and all (discussion thread on this one closed by a moderator). One comment on the Third [now apparently deleted] elucidated: 'Without the Third Law of Thermodynamics, it would be possible to build machines that would last forever and provide an endless source of cheap energy. thus solving both potential crises in energy supply as well as solving the greenhouse gas problem in one step... simples... eh?'"

It's far from a "real opportunity to be involved in politics", unless by that statement you mean it's "an opportunity to have their views ignored by politicians". If our government (and I'm aware that it's a different government, I've seen enough to know they're all basically the same) could ignore the views of 750,000 - 2,000,000 people who turned up in person to protest the Iraq war [bbc.co.uk], what makes you think they won't ignore people who are only posting on the internet? We already have the precedent of government ignoring mass e-petitions on the number 10 petition site, so far as I can see this is no different, they'll cherry pick the laws they want to repeal, find a handful of petitioners and use that to justify that they're following the will of the people, meanwhile they'll conveniently ignore any large petitions to repeal laws they actually want to keep.

It's far from a "real opportunity to be involved in politics", unless by that statement you mean it's "an opportunity to have their views ignored by politicians".

Worse than that, it's an opportunity for politicians to selectively "hear" opinions which support a particular effort or view, and ignore the rest. If everyone were being ignored uniformly, that would at least be fair.

Parent is a restatement of the second law of Thermodynamics. Idiots flow from areas with fewer idiots to areas with more idiots, but it takes work to reverse the flow and decrease the idiot density of one (low-density) area while increasing the idiot density of another, higher-idiot-density area.

Idiots flow from areas with fewer idiots to areas with more idiots, but it takes work to reverse the flow and decrease the idiot density of one (low-density) area while increasing the idiot density of another, higher-idiot-density area.

Now demonstrated to be false since the discovery of Quantum Bogodynamics, back in the early days of IT. http://wikibin.org/articles/quantum-bogodynamics.html [wikibin.org]
Idiots flow from idiot-dense areas to low idiot density - non-idiots must work hard to either keep idiots out. This force is transmitted by an Idiot giving up a particle of Bogon which is absorbed by a non-idiot. Thus manifesting as an attractive force.

This is why the most beautifully engineered and brilliant machines will fail in the most spectacular way when the strongest bogon emitters are invariably attracted to them. This is why Lamborghinis seem to spontanously catch on fire but that old Toyota Corolla you can't can't kill.

But all it would take to reduce the idiot flux in a particular place (say my office) would be to place an idiot detecting demon at the front door. When an idiot approaches the demon closes the door. When a non-idiot approaches the demon opens the door.

The problem is that the idiot-detecting demon at the front door (let's call him Maxwell) will, sadly, become more stupid with each idiot he allows to walk outward, and each idiot he refuses entry. Ultimately, Maxwell will be enough of an idiot that he will fail to function.

...don't you hate it when you take an analogy way too far and still, somehow, it holds?

Nahhh. The idiot burns his damned coffee. If you can find the Folger's demon, he has pretty decent coffee. To get better coffee, you have to get fresh ground and freshly roasted beans. But, you probably knew that already . . .

When you are caught break a regular law (speeding, larceny, etc.), you can expect to be punished with a fine or worse.

If you manage to break any of the Laws of Thermodynamics, you can expect to be lauded, copied, co-author a stream of high-impact papers, get offered some cushy sinecures, and eventually receive a Nobel prize.

The far likelier outcome, of course, is to be given an Ignobel prize, for a fruitless and ill-conceived waste of effort. I suspect the UK government can look forward to at least an honorable mention at the next Ig award ceremonies.

If you manage to break any of the Laws of Thermodynamics, you can expect to be lauded, copied, co-author a stream of high-impact papers, get offered some cushy sinecures, and eventually receive a Nobel prize.

When you are caught break a regular law (speeding, larceny, etc.), you can expect to be punished with a fine or worse.

Over here, you get a citation for speeding (bad thing), and a citation for catching a large fish (a good thing). Confusing! What if you catch a large fish while speeding? Do the citations offset like in American football?

Nonsense - feminists have been campaigning against the laws of Thermodynamics for years: they are sexist, as they favour men, who can understand such complex issues, while women only want to worry their pretty heads about perfume "because they are worth it"

Where I come from, no one can spell it, let alone talk about it. They would get tongue tied trying to pronounce it, which would call for a trip to the emergency room. (Don't look at ME - I'm not untying some homely redneck's tongue for him - the bastard might want to kiss me for helping him!)

Well what the hell did you expect? The site is little more than theater

It is because people like you are making it one.

What if it's real? Why try to kill something that might actually help before it has a chance to show if it's theater or not?

Why is it so hard to believe that a group being voted in on a wave of people finding the government unreasonable, might in fact want to git rid of some of the more egregious laws that have sprung up? It seems pretty obvious if you get rid of very unpopular laws you (and your group) are going to win more elections. So the thought that it's theater did not occur to me, if for no other reason than politician self-interest - and do you really want to bet against THAT?

Being theater is not mutually exclusive to being taken seriously. Just because they couldn't really care less, doesn't mean they are somehow above throwing the people a meaningless and symbolic bone to appease them. Never forget: good theater keeps the lights on and the players employed.

Because political parties are not even doing the things they promised *before* the elections. Should't they at least *try* to implement their political portfolios before they start pondering what their next move should be? In my opinion, this is just a distraction from their inneficiency to do what they promised, or at least something meaningfull. The fact that the discussion evolved into a Monty Python sketch shows that they cannot fool people any more with their rubbish. People are not taking them serious

Because political parties are not even doing the things they promised *before* the elections. Should't they at least *try* to implement their political portfolios before they start pondering what their next move should be?

This was in the LibDem "portfolio" -- their manifesto promised "we will introduce a Freedom Bill to restore the civil liberties that are so precious to the British character", and this is a step towards that. I think we need to take your "political parties are not even doing the things they promised *before* the elections" with a pinch of salt, given that you've just shown that you don't actually know what they promised.

Restore civil liberties because civil liberties are so precious to the British people,

i.e. the classical liberty of freedom of expression (deployed as speech, assembly, photography etc., all coming under the same principle); instead quite specifically aiming to:

Restore only those civil liberties which are somehow identified as "precious" to the British people.

This has further degenerated to:

Consider those civil liberties which a small unrepresentative set of Internet lurkers with too much time on their hands (who may not even be eligible British voters) want to babble about.

Which proves that you haven't actually read the manifesto and are just trolling. Freedom of speech and assembly are specifically addressed, and the problems with photography are coming about because of abuse of anti-terrorist legislation which is also specifically addressed. How much of that they can actually get past the Conservatives is questionable (although quite a bit of that was in the Conservative manifesto too) but all the things you say are not there actually are there. Grammar Nazis get it wrong a

Which proves that you haven't actually read the manifesto and are just trolling.

You pasted a quote from the manifesto. I discussed what the language of the quote actually means. In fact, by analysing the language I've provided support for your argument - the intention of the LDs was to find out what the British find important rather than to merely assert "civil liberties are important" - but you may be so blinkered by support for the Party that you're not even paying attention.

How much of that they can actually get past the Conservatives is questionable (although quite a bit of that was in the Conservative manifesto too) but all the things you say are not there actually are there.

I didn't say something was "not there". I said that the language implies that a selection is going to be made.

You pasted a quote from the manifesto. I discussed what the language of the quote actually means.

Except that had you already read the manifesto at the time you made your comments you would have known that that was not what the language actually meant: although a grammar-Nazi reading could find your interpretation in there the remainder of the text plainly contradicted that reading. And even Fowler (2nd edition), while recognising that your reading of the which/that difference is the better one, acknowledges that using the terms the other way around isn't necessarily an error.

you would have known that that was not what the language actually meant

Yet the LD coalition government has done precisely that. Perhaps you should be more careful when reading manifestos in order to see what principles the Party is more willing to give up.

a lot of people seem to be forgetting that the LibDems did not win the election and we don't have a LibDem government

The Lib Dems were not forced into forming a coalition with anyone. The Lib Dems had the opportunity to try much harder to require various policies as a condition of coalition, yet they required almost nothing. The only possible advantage of this coalition is a tempering of more extreme Tories who would otherwise destabilise t

Yet the LD coalition government has done precisely that. Perhaps you should be more careful when reading manifestos in order to see what principles the Party is more willing to give up.

Strangely, none of the manifestos included that.

The Lib Dems were not forced into forming a coalition with anyone.

Indeed. Had they not, we would almost certainly have a Conservative government now, with no tempering of the more extreme Conservative policies. It looks to me as if they did the right thing there, but maybe you wanted to see those more extreme Conservative policies in force?

The Lib Dems had the opportunity to try much harder to require various policies as a condition of coalition, yet they required almost nothing.

Really? How do you know they didn't try as had as they could? They were in a weak position because they and the Conservatives both knew that only the Conservatives could afford to run anot

Not only that, but whatever government won the election was going to have an extremely tough time staying in power at the next one; the measures necessary to cut our country's deficit are unlikely to win many votes.

Well, I could give you mounds of evidence, but here's what stands out:

Clegg, the overt organiser of this circus, has sold out his Party to a power shak^Hring agreement, abandoning pretty much every core platform on which they established their vote. More insidiously, he's accepting arrangements which make it look like the LDs are pushing for their manifesto when in fact they're doing precisely the opposite. For example, his Party has steadfastly put voting reform to Proportional Representation at the top of the political agenda for decades, but now he is proposing the Alternative Voting method - a "compromise" system even less Proportional than FPTP which will inevitably be voted against in any referendum, ensuring the status quo.

The LDs have always been the "Party who cares"[tm], i.e. proposes more than just slight tweaks, and they've always been laughed at because, "They'd never really do that and can only say that because they'll never get into power." Well, now they do have a certain degree of power. And they're doing none of what they said. Instead, as just illustrated, their method will be to listen, propose a "compromise" which no-one wants at all, then wait until it's not imposed and nothing changes at all. The exceptions will be where laws were already going to be tweaked, in which case this site will be used as an excuse (digital economy, personal welfare).

tl;dr We are living in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. There is neither the framework, education, means nor (most importantly) interest to listen directly to the people. Even referendums are barely an exception as they're worded precisely by the government and (hi, EU!) sometimes just repeated until the population is worn down and the right answer is obtained.

Hmm... my understanding was that the proportionality (fairness) of a voting system was not a matter of opinion, but rather a fairly well-defined area of mathematics, and so an assertion that AV was less fair than (say) STV or FPTP could be backed up some formulae and numbers.

I'm not saying you're wrong - just that the finality with which you stated it made me want a solid, indisputable citation.

So did I the first time I heard it. I knew there was a trick since the person had a giant idiot grin on his face while he cited the number of fatalities caused buy it.

This is one of those tricks that idiots hear and like to repeat because it make them think they are looking clever. Have you ever know someone who memorized the answers to one or two incredibility difficult equations and kept spouting it out? My favorite are people who run their emails through a thesaurus so they can use bigger words even when they do not know what those new words mean.

I think that we can all agree that we should work together.

becomes

I deliberate that we container all enunciate that we should vocation simultaneously.

I thought that's how they talked in China, and some of the rest of Asia. Seriously - have you read some of their maintenance manuals, owner's manuals, or assembly instructions? If you get one, just study the pictures. The printed instructions will just make your head hurt!

I suspect that nobody is really that bothered by laws requiring those under 16 to practice with the longbow or cabs to carry bails of hay. I also seriously doubt that many people even know that many laws, let alone which ones are absurd.

The really clever bit being that Professor Brian Cox [wikipedia.org] really is a top-ranking physics professor, who was indeed the keyboardist for the band D:Ream who did have a UK number one hit "Things can only get better [wikipedia.org]" that was used as the election theme tune for the previous government. Which puts the satire way above The Onion. You'd have thought that a CERN scientist wouldn't have penned such an inaccurate song, although "Things will get more and more random" probably wouldn't have achieved the same chart success.

I remember a news article that circulated around the communications company where I worked, on some April 1st, saying that Shannon's Law had been repealed, and the company was ready to release a new product offering high speed Internet access over HF on a 2.8 kHz channel. So, I'd vote for Shannon's Law to be repealed.

Oh, sure, they'll spit their dummies and force an election the instant the ink is dry on any new voting system that gives them even a sniff of real power, which is why the Cons will never let them have one.

And they can't throw their toys out of the pram over the issue, because until they have a new system, they'll always be a minority party, and so they have to walk the talk about how it's possible for them to be part of a working coalition government. If they bring down the government under the current

I actually thought about this once, not that I have any illusions about being able to do it; it was just a Gedankenexperiment. My conclusion was that if the Second Law was eliminated, the odds are good that somewhere in the universe some process would enter a feedback loop, producing ever more energy at an ever accelerating rate, and the first we'd know about it would be when the shock wave washed over us at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.

The universe as it stands may be a raw deal, but most imaginable tweaks to the laws of physics make it even worse.

Well actually, the British Empire is no more, so the effects of UK legislation would be limited to it's borders.I'm pretty sure that biological processes require 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, so life in the UK would cease, but all of UK neighbours would benefit from the energy leakage of from (possibly) the only non-singularity free of the second law.

I mean really, it's not even tagged "Funny". Probably because people trolling what appears to be a legitimate attempt by an oppressive government to actually be, you know, less oppressive, really isn't funny to begin with.

Same goes for the previous "story", whose title is not just grossly misleading, but plain wrong. Curiously, these two stories have the same editor. And yes, I'm willing to risk my karma to point this out.

Probably because people trolling what appears to be a legitimate attempt by an oppressive government to actually be, you know, less oppressive, really isn't funny to begin with.

That's cute. My own interpretation would be: attempt to grab a few headlines and sound like we're listening while continuing to do what we would have done anyway. We've had this kind of shit for 13 years (No 10 petitions anyone?) and if the new government seriously thinks people are going to fall for it just because it's a differen

Let's expand the idea...rotation, that would create force based on rotation, and where there's no external influence on me, presumably I would remain attached to the ground. However, when such force is exerted that would exceed the centripetal force of the Earth's rotation, I would fly free in whichever direction...

I think you just might have given an answer to a completely sarcastic question. And maybe made me realize why the law of gravity might exist in the first place...not sure, beer by this point h

The Earth would explode, since nothing would counteract its internal pressure anymore. So would Sun, Moon, and any other body kept together by gravity. Earth's explosion would likely kill you, but if it by some miracle failed to do so, the lack of breathable air - since that too is lost as soon as gravity fails - would, and then the expanding shockwave from Sun's explosion would vaporize your bloated remains, assuming that the increased radiation due to its core shining through dispersing external parts wou

The reason this is largely being treated as a joke by the British people is that most of the unpopular laws are coming from Brussels, not London. There isn't much the British government can do about EU directives, besides withdraw from the EU. And that's not on the table.

OMG. I just happened to catch that episode of Monty Python over the recent US Independence Day holiday while flipping through the channels. I can only take 5 minute doses of MP, so the odds of me catching that very scene are 'inconceivable!'.

Yes, we need better government at the federal level (to put in in American terms), and the only way we will get that is by getting better constitutional arrangements, which will only happen if the EU actually gets a proper constitution - but that will reduce the power of state governments even further.

The reason this is largely being treated as a joke by the British people is that most of the unpopular laws are coming from Brussels, not London. There isn't much the British government can do about EU directives, besides withdraw from the EU. And that's not on the table.

Well, that's what the insular British press says. Funny thing is, the rest of the EU tends not to have the really nasty laws. You'd think that they would if Brussels were imposing them on the whole EU, wouldn't you?

The serious favourite for repeal on that site is the law against cannabis. Perfectly reasonable law to repeal. Plenty of good reasons for doing so. But there's no change the government will do so. They aren't really interested in hearing what the public wants. They just want it to appear that they are listening.

Hence why the public choose to ridicule the whole thing by voting for the repeal of various laws of physics.

That's why this site is failing. There's no duplication checks, and each request is specific. I'd have thought a better way is to be able to submit a request, and have others submit 'parts' to that act, which visitors can agree on a one-by-one basis. Still make it open, but better moderated. Now where do I know a decent moderation system?